Bill Lockwood: King Cuomo of NY: Shades of Herod!

Shockingly, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, recently signed into law measures to expand abortion rights across the state. Mislabeled the Reproductive Health Act, the state of New York wanted to put protective barriers around Roe v Wade which Democrats feared could be overturned by a more conservative Supreme Court under Donald Trump. Cuomo stated: “With the signing of this bill, we are sending a clear message that whatever happens in Washington, women in New York will always have the fundamental right to control their own body.”

The bill allows women to abort their babies up to the very moment of birth, even as they prepare for delivery. This grotesque ignoring of the value of children’s lives by abortion—properly called infanticide—is alarming and should serve as a wake-up call to all Americans as to the wicked direction of leftist politics.

Herod the Great, the unusually cruel king of Judea who served under the auspices of Emperor Augustus at the time of our Lord’s birth, was in the last years of his reign when he learned that “the King of the Jews” was to be born in Bethlehem. In an effort to exterminate Jesus Christ, the newborn king, Herod ruthlessly slaughtered all of the babies of Bethlehem from two years old and younger (Matt. 2:16). Cuomo is cut out of the same cloth.

What’s next? Allowing the murder of children up to two years old? New York’s reasoning is that their bill involves the Reproductive Health of a woman. What about her Psychological Health? Here is how two Italian utilitarian professors argued for infanticide-even after birth-due to a woman’s psychological health.

However, having a child can itself be an unbearable burden for the psychological health

of the woman or for her already existing children, regardless of the condition of the fetus. This could happen in the case of a woman who loses her partner after she finds out that she is pregnant and therefore feels she will not be able to take care of the possible child by herself.

Giubilini & Minerva

The above statement was published in a prestigious online Journal of Medical Ethics several years ago. If that is not an argument for infanticide, it would be difficult to determine what would constitute one. It was co-authored by Alberto Giubilini of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and Francesca Minerva of the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. Their position is that killing of a newborn baby is “ethically permissible” in all circumstances where abortion would be.

To soften our minds to this horrific suggestion, they tell us that the unborn child as well as the newborn is “only a potential person.” Further, feeling that “infanticide” is too strong a term, they therefore “propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion.’” This emphasizes “that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than a child.” In other words, quit thinking in human terms like “child” or “baby.”

The “circumstances” which would “ethically” allow “abortion” include such considerations as when the “well-being of the family” is at risk. And then, almost unbelievably, the professors tell us that “The best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice…”

Biubilini & Minerva’s reasoning is simply an extension of the justification for Cuomo’s abortion bill. Let New Yorkers or any pro-choice person give a coherent answer as to the conceptual difference between a woman’s reproductive health and her psychological health. This cannot be done precisely because abortion itself is infanticide: the killing of innocent God-given life.

Once a society begins wickedly exterminating its unborn children (America has murdered more than 1 million babies a year since 1973—financed in large part by taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood) a hardening of the conscience begins that inevitably leads to open Herodian-style infanticide. New York proudly leads the way downward.

One might ask the professors, or the Governor, who sets himself forth as some great one on this issue, just how long after birth might a baby be murdered? The professors are not certain on this point. That will have to be settled by “neurologists and psychologists” who advise the “king.” And that advice will be skewed depending upon the interest of the crown.